Bossyboots free again

Hi all,
Just a quick post to let you know that I have made 'Bossyboots' free again for a short period.
If you would like a copy of 'Bossyboots' please follow this link to my website and you will find the details.

A customer's review
'Not the kind of book that I would normally read, but I had read all the authors other books and really enjoyed them so I had to give this a try, and I am very glad that I did. A very good story, well thought out with good characters.
I would recommend this book to anyone as I would all of this authors books'

When is a toasty not a toasty

Hi all,
There was a time when eating out was a pleasure. Cafes and pubs provided delicious meals and took pride in what they were serving. I'm sorry to say that by and large this has changed and finding an establishment that serves decent food is a real challenge. Some of the stuff I've been presented with should have gone straight into the wheelie.

I'm not even fussy, good hot food that is tasty and presented cleanly is all that I require. The only other thing I would add is that I don't like waiting too long. Sitting in a dreary pub for an hour waiting for lasagna and chips is the stuff of nightmares.

Anyway, my wife and I decided we need a break from preparing to move house and decided to try a restaurant that was part of a garden centre. It had recently been refurbished an the owner were bragging about how good the food is.

The weather was grim when we arrived, so were disappointed to find that the menu consisted mostly of sandwiches. I can make a sandwich at home and given that it was drizzling for Britain outside we really wanted something hot, so we both elected to have a toasty.

I ordered cheese and onion while my wife went for ham and pineapple. She also fancied a bit of cheese in her toasty and when she gave here order she asked if some cheese could be added. Now we ain't daft and expected them to add a little surcharge for this extra, but 75pence seemed extravagant for a bit of cheese that would fill a mouse trap. This meant that the cost of her toasty soared to over £5, but what the hell, I was paying and it was supposed to be a treat.

Thirty minutes passed before the food arrived, but hey ho, good food is worth waiting for. My wife's face dropped to the floor when the food arrived. Instead of a toasty we were presented with 2 slices of toasted bread which held the raw filling. To make matters worse the edges of my wife's bread were burnt. But it doesn't end there, the cheese that was worth it's weight in diamonds wasn't present.

Alongside this imposter of a toasty was a side salad that consisted of a piece of lank lettuce, 2 slices of stale cucumber, a quarter of a tomato and wait for it, half a tangerine. Yes, that's right, half a tangerine. There would have been a lot of head shaking if a masterchef contestant had served that concoction up to Greg Wallace and John Torode.

Eventually, my wife, who was by now getting a touch vexed, managed to catch the attention of the lady who'd taken our order.
"Where's the cheese I paid an extra 75 pence for," my wife asked as she peeled back the top of the imitation toasty."
"I'm sorry," says the woman, "I can take it back and have some put on," the woman replied.
"Don't bother, I'll just have my 75 pence back," said my wife to the woman who was looking a trifle disgruntled.

I wondered how she expected the toasty to get on if she had given it another blast under the grill because it already resembled one of Joan of Arc's hankies. I passed my comments onto the woman but she walked away without raising a smile.

I was hungry so I ate as much as I could and my wife had a bit of a poke around in hers before she went off to get her 75pence and complain about the toasty which was actually a sandwich made from toasted bread.

I met her outside by the car and was surprised to find her laughing. Apparently, the restaurant can't do proper toasties because they don't have a toasty maker. The woman also went on to say that they used to do proper toasties because another lady used to bring her toasty machine in with her everyday from home. However, she doesn't work there any more, so that's why they can't do proper toasties.

I can't understand the logic of the owner spending thousands of pound refurbishing a restaurant and then failing to provide the staff with a fifty pound toaster so that they can make the items that are on the menu. No wonder my wife was laughing.

New Car Madness

Hi All,
Finding a new car should be an good experience and by and large that is what we had recently after deciding to part with our Yaris. However, we were left aghast after visiting one showroom.

Firstly, let me tell you why we were changing cars. This was our second Yaris and we found it, like the first, an economical and comfortable drive. The first Yaris was an automatic and we enjoyed having her for three years. The only complaint we had was that the automatic gear box wasn't well suited to motorway driving. So we changed to a new one with a manual 6 speed gear box.

To begin with it was fine and seemed to suit us down to the ground, but eventually the 6 speed gearbox began to grate. Not literally of coursed, the engineering was fine, it was just tedious having to change gear so many times on even a short journey. The gears were so close together that unless I concentrated hard I didn't know what gear I was in. Let's face it, driving isn't easy any more; half the drivers I see are on the phone while most of the others are picking their noses in search of that elusive bogey.

Anyway, we decided we needed an automatic, but the cheapest automatic Yaris was out of our budget so we had to find a new model. All we wanted was a small comfortable car with an automatic gearbox, how hard could it be?

This is what happened at one dealership.

We parked our car in the customers' car park and walked along the front of the showroom looking at the new cars. However, this showroom, unlike all the others we had already visited, didn't have any small cars in the showroom, they were parked outside.

We began looking at one of these models and tried to open the doors so that we could sit inside and get the feel for it. That was our first mistake because all the doors were locked.

At this point we were approached by a couple of salesmen. One was a young lad who looked as if he had only just got into long pants and the other had daft spiky hair which made him look like he'd come to work on speedboat. The youngest of the two introduced himself as the sales manager and we had a short conversation about wanting to look inside the car and asked if they did it in automatic.
He said an automatic version was available and they both went off to retrieve the keys so that we might be able to sit in the car that we were looking at.

Well my wife and I stood there like a couple of stooges for at least five minutes waiting for at least one of them to return when we were approached by a man in a suit who looked like a bouncer from the local nightclub. If you think Joe Bugner you will know what I mean.

"I'm the manager, can I help?" he asked abruptly.
"We are waiting for your sales manager to come back with the keys so that we can look inside this car," my wife said.
"Leave it with me," he said as he strutted off looking like he was going to give somebody a left hook.

Another five minutes past while we circled the car more times than Sitting Bull and his trusty braves went around a beleaguered waggon train bound for Wounded Knee. To be honest, we were going off it and seeing as the salesmen didn't want a sale we headed back to our car.

Just as we were getting into our car, the salesman with the spiky hair was coming out of the back of the showroom at the other end of the building.

"Were are you going?" he shouted.
"Sorry we've waited around long enough," I replied.
"But I've got the keys to an automatic parked in the compound," he shouted as he held the keys aloft, just in case I didn't know what keys look like.
"Sorry, but you've had your chance," I said as I got into the car.
"Well piss off then," he said.
My wife, who at this time was still standing said, "I heard that."
"No you didn't," he replied.

In years gone by I would have got back out of the car and had it out with him. Reported him to the manager and all that stuff, but I keep trying to rise above that sort of stuff. So we laughed it off and hoped that when he got back inside his deserted showroom that the Joe Bugner look alike, would land him one squarely on the chin.

I won't mention which dealership it was or the make of car involved because during the whole time we were there we didn't see another customer and I guess there is no need to wonder why?

More Madness

We have been having our groceries delivered for several years now. By and large it works well because it saves us walking around the store dodging the numerous zombies that seem to frequent every aisle.

There have been a few problems, like the time when I ordered some Australian Merlot wine. They were out of stock on the Merlot so the person picking my order substituted Australian Shiraz.The thing is, I wanted Merlot not Shiraz, but they thought the most important thing was the fact that it was Australian. On reflection, I'm just glad I didn't receive a boomerang.

Anyway, I think the whole on line shopping for groceries is in decline. I base this observation on the fact that our shopping was very often late or it appeared at the very end of our allocated slot. But things have changed, Our shopping is getting earlier and earlier and always before our allocated time.

I don't want it early. I want it during the slot that I have booked. This allows them to organise their deliveries and me to organise the rest of my day. Coming early isn't a bonus it's a pain in the Jacksy.

We usually have the shopping delivered between 9am and 11am, so imagine my surprise this week when I took some stuff out to the wheelie bin and parked up at the end of the street was the delivery van. The driver, who we knew well, was reading a newspaper that was propped on the steering wheel.

I checked my watch and noted that the time was 8:20am, so that is at least 40 minutes earlier and too early for even him to turn up on our doorstep. I had a slice of toast and he knocked on the door at ten minutes to nine.

On a happier note, we have just taken delivery of a new car and we are pleased with it. However, we did have a strange experience when choosing the model and I will tell you about that in my next post.

By the way, I have decided to extend the free offer regarding my book Bossyboots.

If you would like to download a free copy please click here and type in coupon code TK32S at the check out. If you would like to know what this funny book is about,Click here to watch the trailer